Conflicts & the conflict wall
The wall between index operations and the trading circuit, plus standing disclosures.
W.E.T. operates two things that must not contaminate each other: an index layer that publishes benchmarks, and a trading circuit (WET Verified anchors, the War Room, tournaments) whose members trade the markets those benchmarks are computed from.
The wall between them is what lets both exist. Without it, every index value carries the suspicion that someone inside knew first.
The standing rules
No early access to a rule or a composition change. Anchors, War Room members and paying subscribers see constituent changes, rule changes and methodology decisions at the same moment as the public. Nothing that alters how a benchmark is computed reaches anyone early, at any tier, for any price. This rule is absolute and has no exceptions below.
No index role for circuit participants. Nobody who competes in the circuit takes part in constituent selection, classification review, or settlement.
Timing of VALUES is tiered, disclosed, and open to anyone. Two paid surfaces do see a benchmark value before the free tier does, and this page names them rather than implying they do not exist:
/api/pro/v1/indices/<slug>serves the same-day close on publication (the free tier waits until D+1, because a same-day re-run can still replace the row) and the intraday indicative, which the free tier does not carry at all./indices/week/previewshows entitled members the cultivation panel's selected slate candidate on Sunday evening, ahead of the public 09:30 ET Monday release.
The controls that make this a latency tier rather than selective disclosure: access is non-discriminatory (the tier is purchasable by anyone, and priced publicly), the delay and its reason are stated in the payload itself, benchmark values are public in full at D+1 with the complete history and chain intact, and the administrator does not trade the constituents (rule 5). Tiered market-data latency is ordinary practice for index providers; presenting it as an absence is not.
What is still enforced in code: no path serves a methodology or composition change early, and the intraday indicative is explicitly never a settlement — it carries its own status and refuses rather than publishing a value it cannot support.
Correction, 2026-08-04. Until this date rules 1 and 3 stated that there was no preview tier, no embargoed feed, and no authenticated endpoint returning pre-settlement benchmark state. Both statements were false once the Pro API and the insider preview shipped, and the page was not updated with them. The rules above now describe what the code actually does. No value was withheld or disclosed differently as a result of the error; the defect was in the disclosure, not in the settlement.
No venue equity, no order flow, no exclusive routing. W.E.T. never operates order flow, never takes exchange equity, and indexes every eligible CFTC-regulated venue equally. Affiliate relationships with venues are disclosed on the pages that carry them and have no input into eligibility, weighting, or classification.
The administrator does not trade the constituents. Personal positions in markets that are current or candidate constituents of a benchmark are not held.
Standing disclosures
- The index committee is not yet constituted. §3.7 calls for the administrator plus at least one independent member. The independent seat is vacant, and until it is filled the administrator is the sole decision-maker on methodology changes. This is a real governance gap, it is disclosed here rather than papered over, and it is the reason the benchmark family is published as v1.0 with the consultation process running in the open.
- Affiliate revenue. W.E.T. earns affiliate revenue when a reader clicks through to a venue. Constituent selection is rules-based and published; no affiliate relationship affects it.
Reporting a suspected conflict
Use the process in complaints.md. Conflict reports are answered even when they are wrong, and the answer is published if the reporter is willing.